GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 821 



vation, and this for repose, of the mental organ. In sleep the 

 eyes close and sight goes ; what then happens to the brain- 

 fibres we cannot see nor tell : but the sum of action called 

 ' soul ' ceases. Deep sleep is utter unconsciousness to Dog and 

 Man. The initial steps, and partial resumptions, of brain-action 

 are ( dreams ' ; the awakening one issuing, often suddenly, in the 

 full blaze of consciousness. 



I am most averse to travel beyond my proper province ; but 

 a general physiological conclusion from the phenomena of the 

 nervous system inevitably brings on collision with a dogmatic 

 affirmation or definition of the cause of the highest class of those 

 phenomena instilled as an article of religious faith into fellow- 

 Christians, and on which is based their mode of thought affecting 



~ o 



dearest hopes and highest aspirations. It must be repugnant to 

 any good man's feelings to say aught that may unsettle such 

 mode of thought, though he knows that what he has to impart 

 lends truer and better support to both the faith and the hope. 



If the hypothesis that an abstract entity produces psycho- 

 logical phenomena by playing upon the brain as a musician upon 

 his instrument, producing bad music when the fibres or cords are 

 put of tune, be rejected, and these phenomena be held to be the 

 result of cerebral actions, an objection is made that the latter 

 view is ' materialistic ' and adverse to the notion of an inde- 

 pendent, indivisible, ' immaterial,' mental principle or soul. 



What ( materialistic ' means in the mind of the objector I 

 nowhere find intelligibly laid down ; but it is generally felt to be 

 something objectionable, 'inconsistent with, or shaking the founda- 

 tions of an article of faith,' as Stillingfleet would have said. 



To this I repeat Locke's answer, that my faith in a future life 

 and the resurrection of the dead rests on the grounds of their 

 being parts of a divine revelation. 



If I mistake not, present knowledge of the way in which we 

 derive ideas of an outer world helps to a more intelligible con- 

 ception of ' matter,' ' substance,' ( immateriality,' &c. than could 

 be framed by patristic and mediaeval theology. To make intelli- 

 gible my own ideas in this subject, which the anticipated imputa- 

 tion draws from me, I would put a case and ask a question. 



When Saul at Endor "perceived that it was Samuel," 1 lines 

 of force, as ( luminous undulations,' struck upon his retina. 

 Qu. Were the centres whence they diverged to produce the idea 

 of the dead Prophet ' material ' or f immaterial ' ? 



Other lines of force, undulated in another manner, from 



1 1 Sara, xxviii. 14. 



